Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil Hands-On
We play both the single-player and multiplayer portions of the Doom 3 expansion and come away impressed.
id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead explains what you can expect from Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil.
There were few games more anticipated last year than Doom 3, the long-awaited return of the Doom series--the great-granddaddy of first-person shooters. And Doom 3 turned out to be a technological tour de force and is still easily one of the best-looking games that you can play on any platform. Now Activision and id are reloading with Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, an expansion pack that began development early last year. Under development by Nerve Software, Resurrection of Evil promises to serve up even more of the gory first-person action that we've come to expect from Doom. We recently had the opportunity to try out both the single-player and multiplayer portions of Resurrection of Evil, and we came away impressed with the expansion, particularly with how it seems to try to improve on some of the issues in the original game.
There's little time wasted in setting up the game's premise, which is explained in an in-game cutscene when you start up a campaign. The gist of the story is that after abandoning Mars after the events of Doom 3, humanity is once again drawn back to the red planet. With typical human hubris, the Union Aerospace Corporation is again setting up operations on Mars, but this time with even more marines to defend against what happened before. Your character is one of the nameless marines sent deep underground to explore the ruins of an ancient civilization, where a mysterious signal is detected. After entering a long-sealed room, you're drawn to a strange relic levitating in the air. In perhaps not so wise a move, you pick it up and, in the process, reopen the gates to hell. Your fellow marines are vaporized by strange mystical energy, and you find yourself alone and outnumbered by all sorts of hellspawn. Naturally, that's your cue to cowboy up and save our dimension from demonic invasion.
Resurrection of Evil doesn't do much to enhance or improve the existing game engine, but that's probably because the Doom 3 engine still remains on the cutting edge. This expansion looks just as sharp and striking as the original game did last year, and it certainly benefits from the new setting. The opening levels of the expansion are set in ruins and caves, which have a much different feel from the "tech hallway after tech hallway" look that dominated the early levels of the original. You'll enter caverns with lava pits, explore dusty old rooms, and get lost in an exquisitely rendered world. Along the way, you'll battle all sorts of demons, some returning from the original game while others are brand new. These include new types of zombies, as well as a nimble demon that likes to teleport around and leap at you.
At your disposal will be a range of weapons, many of which will be familiar since they're taken from the original game. These include the assault rifle, the combat shotgun, the pistol, and the pulse rifle. While the expansion pack does introduce a special suit with a flashlight built into the helmet, you'll still have to toggle between flashlight and weapon throughout parts of the game. Resurrection of Evil introduces several new weapons, including the double-barreled shotgun, which packs a huge punch capable of flooring most demons with a single shot. That's the goods news. The bad news is that you have to reload the double-barreled shotgun after every pull of the trigger, so it's not so ideal when you're being overwhelmed by monsters. Still, when you want something dead fast, it's an extremely potent weapon.
The next new weapon is the grabber gun, which lets you pick up and throw objects and manipulate the game's physics engine in many ways. It works much like the gravity gun in Half-Life 2. We experimented a bit with the grabber to pick up rocks and hurl them at enemies, but that wasn't so effective since it's a bit hard to hit a moving target that way. The grabber is far more useful to retrieve ammo, armor, and health packs from a distance, as well as to clear obstacles in your path. That said, the first boss that you will encounter will require you to use the grabber gun to capture balls of energy fired by a nearby sentry gun and redirect them the boss's way. The grabber has a limited amount of energy, though, so you can hold onto an object for only a few seconds before its charge runs out. You'll then have to let the grabber recharge, which takes a few seconds.
Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil Quick Links
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- Activision
- Nerve Software
- Sci-Fi First-Person...
- Release: Apr 4, 2005
- ESRB: Mature
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